Business

KamerLyrics: A Young Entrepreneur's Gift to Cameroonian Music

Poise celebrates KamerLyrics, a Cameroonian lyrics app created by Minette Lontsie, that solves the frustration of finding song words to beloved local tracks. The platform combines a growing database of Cameroonian music with YouTube integration and crowdsourced contributions, making it both practical and community-driven.

Wandji WilfredWandji Wilfred· 30 May 2019
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Have any of you have ever listened to some good makossa from the 80s and wished you had the lyrics to sing along? I know I have.

When I was faced with such a situation, I’d usually go to Google search and try to pull up the lyrics from there hoping that some benevolent soul has written the lyrics on some dark website that only Google’s algorithm could bring up. Almost all the time, I’ll end up disappointed.

Well, we can all kiss goodbye to that experience. I discovered this app called KamerLyrics. As its name suggests, it is an app where one can find lyrics to Cameroonian songs.

At the head of this project is a young Cameroonian woman. She is called Minette Lontsie. She is also an entrepreneur and a blogger at lemobileaukamer.com.

The app is really good and practical. There are hundreds of songs therein already. Some obscure songs might not turn up when you search for them but most of all the popular songs you can think of can be found on the app; especially the recent urban music records from the likes of Salatiel and Locko.

The app also has a YouTube plug-in incorporated into it. What do I mean by this? Let’s say you want to listen to ‘Promets-moi’ by Daphne. Well, you open the app, search Daphne and select the song ‘Promets-moi.’ If you look down at the left corner of your phone screen, you will see a YouTube window.

If you want to listen to the song as you read the lyrics, you can click on the YouTube window and the song will start playing from YouTube. Cool huh? If you are low on data, you can, of course, play music from your phone directly and not have to click on the YouTube window. There are apps out there that allow you to play YouTube in background mode - meaning you get the only the video and hence consume only as much data as you would if you listened to an audio-only YoutTube file.

Another really cool thing about the whole project is that you, yes I’m talking you reading this, can contribute to the app by submitting lyrics of songs you cannot find on the app. I recently submitted the lyrics to a song myself. To do that you’ll have to submit the lyrics via the desktop website (www.kamerlyrics.net) or you can email the lyrics to them at redaction@kamerlyrics.net

I hope all the up and coming and established musicians reading this can take this opportunity to submit the lyrics to their songs so we the fans can enjoy their lyrics as we listen to their songs.

As to the rest of us, let us download the app and write some positive feedback to our sister and her team, so they can make the app better.

MbokoGang people, here's an opportunity for you guys to make yourselves useful...for once. Hehehe😁

- Wandji Wilfred.

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